Networks often experience topology changes that necessitate route updates. For example, an administrator may add a router to a network and/or remove a router from the network. Additionally or alternatively, a physical link in the network may suffer a failure that prevents the flow of network traffic via certain paths. As a result, the routers within the network may need to modify routes affected by topology changes within their routing tables and/or forwarding tables. To facilitate modifying the affected routes in this way, the routers may converge with one another by advertising updates to the affected routes.
In this context, the term “convergence” may refer to the process of updating affected routes to account for topology changes within a network. Traditional routers may advertise updates to the affected routes by sending the updates to one another. Some of the affected routes may be more important than others. For example, one of the affected routes may carry a lot of traffic, but another one of the affected routes may carry practically no traffic at all.
Unfortunately, these traditional routers may be unable to forward traffic via the affected routes until the updates have been installed into the routers' routing and forwarding tables. Moreover, the order in which these updates are sent by the traditional routers may have little, if any, meaning or purpose. Since the updates are sent in no particular order during convergence, these traditional routers may end up installing updates to very important routes (e.g., high-traffic routes) after a long queue of updates to unimportant routes (e.g., low-traffic routes). As a result, the traditional routers may be unable to forward traffic via the very important routes until after the updates to the unimportant routes have been installed, thereby potentially causing delays and/or disruptions in the routers' forwarding capabilities.
The instant disclosure, therefore, identifies and addresses a need for additional and improved methods, systems, and apparatuses for improving forwarding capabilities during route convergence.